Platinum credit parent co-signing for adult child - would you rent a lot to them?

mobile home university
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I’m new to parks and still getting used to the idea of loosening my credit standards vs the apartment industry. Just “rejected” my very first applicant 2 weeks after closing on this property - should I reconsider?

A long-time resident who moved out of the park has his house for sale at roughly $8,000. He found a buyer to pay him cash for it and referred them to me to run the application.

What I got was the following - a “dual” application for two people to live in the trailer and both names would be on the title (though the mom admitted to me this is really for her daughter - mom clearly lives with her husband in a stick built house she owns elsewhere in town):

Mom: 50’something with FICO over 700, no arrests, no evictions, owns a single family home, has a full time $13/hr job at the local four year university and has been employed there over two years.

Daughter: 31 y/o single mom daughter with three kids age 0/1/2, 554 FICO, an eviction 18 months ago, roughly $1,100 / mth in verifiable income cobbled together from child support and food stamps.

Daughter’s prior rental history: Lease is up on current apartment. Has only been there one year and wants to save money by owning her own mobile home. Current landlord says she was late 7 times in 12 months but has no balance due. Prior landlord says she left the apartment with $3,000 in damage, was always late on the rent, problems with police getting called.

Conclusion: Hemmed and hawed and decided to approve their application with roughly 5X the normal security deposit - $,1500 instead of $350. Mom was furious, kept pointing out that she was completely clean, would own the trailer free and clear. Kept saying she wouldn’t put down this kind of security deposit to rent “a piece of dirt.”

Am I being too strict? Was I crazy to request a deposit this high? My fear is that one day mom gets fed up with loser, jobless daughter and decides to break the lease. Daughter can’t pay for anything and by now has trashed the home - which I take through abandonment and then have to spend several thousand dollars rehabbing to get it back on the market.

The housing and rental market here is very strong and I haven’t even cleaned up the park cosmetically or advertised and I have multiple applications and calls coming in from people simply driving by.

All opinions appreciated!

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BTW - yes of course I realize food stamps are not money but they do obviously reduce the need to spend money on food - leaving more for rent.

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What I see from your info:

Mom & Dad have been subsidizing her rent for quite some time and they can’t afford to do it continuously. This is an effort to help their daughter without giving her money or paying her rent forever. A one time purchase of a mobile which they will most likely finance through CCs.

The daughter and her children will most likely continue getting help from the gov’t and child support until the children reach 18.

Probably the best way to insure this for you would be if Mom & Dad own the mobile and pay the space rent. But that would require you to approve the daughter to “rent / use it” from Mom & Dad as a tenant of theirs.

Should a problem arise you can deal directly with Mom & Dad. The daughter might even obtain Section 8 vouchers for housing, since she doesn’t own it.

This sounds like a win / win for everyone, unless one of the forum gurus sees something illegal about my suggestion.

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I’m less concerned about the finances as I am the behavior. Do you really want to accept a tenant who has caused other landlords issues with the police showing up a lot? And when you decide to enforce the rules they will abandon and trash the home? You don’t want to breed this type of activity in your Park.

Unless your demand is extremely low I would wait for someone else. Get busy with bandit signs, ads in the paper, CL, Zillow, postlets, etc and you should be getting applications from someone without as much baggage.

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Run, don’t walk, from this bunch as you are letting yourself in for nothing but heartache from these people. The mother doesn’t want to live with her daughter and is willing to pay someone (you) to handle the problems that will inevitably erupt.

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Have not posted here in a while but seeing this post I have to respond as I have been the sucker on this end of the equation a few times lately. I would say it works out about 50% of the time

You are going to find yourself inserted into the middle of this family dynamic…whatever it is.

If everything works out OK you will never need to contact the parent. but if it does not, should you have to contact the parent, be prepared to get sucked into the family drama.

I will noq only accepted a deal like this if the child had been a decent tenant and was only moving for good cause such as being closer to family, better school district, affordability etc

One case like this has worked out beautifully because the father was no patsy and took command of the situation from the get go. One worked out because family was very supportive of the tenant…it was just a very good and close family supporting a younger member who needed a hand up.

One did not work out because the family itself was somewhat dysfunctional with the child being very high maintenance and not a rule follower. The child eventually destroyed the home, rather than move out and give it back to her mother,

In another case the parent so wanted out of being the caretaker for the adult child that they signed over title to the home to the child under duress and without our knowledge. When we went for an eviction of the parent, found out about the title. The home was sold by the child to a wholesaler for a quick $1000 (about 1/10th of its value) and moved out of the park leaving us with an expensive lot to fill and little recourse.

My advice, only accept a tenant if the tenant has demonstrated that they can be a good tenant.

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Do not walk, run away from this applicant. Regardless of the financial security of the parents you are going to end up with a nightmare tenant, reality is the daughter and her children will probably cause more issues in the community than it is worth. The parents will not have any control over her behaviour.
If it were a applicant only lacking financial qualifications it might be a different story to accept a guarantor but this woman has a proven bad track record as a tenant.
Reject based on the daughters past record.
If you are not going to set and stick to your screening standards there is no point in having screening standards in the first place.

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Greg, Bosse, Rolf, Jhutson and Jd585 - thank you all very much for your helpful and detailed advice. After being told the deposit would be $1,500 they never called back - problem solved.